Why
by northernexposure
Summary: H/R post 8.8 one-shot, a follow-on to 'Where', told from Harry's POV.


Why

A/N: I am totally burned out, as you'll probably be able to tell from this length of probably unintelligible ramble. For HRFan, who planted the seed.

* * *

The blow, when it came, announced itself in all the accepted colours of the Apocalypse. The sky burned orange before turning black with smoke. The air was filled with sulphur and knife blades, with screams, with shock and awe and despair. His unconsciousness came suddenly, hurling out of the hellish melee, and was blacker than the dark before the dawn.

Harry did not believe in the concept of a final, absolute Apocalypse. This was not merely because religion had never factored very highly on his list of essential facets of being, but because he knew that the world would not end in a global, absolute blur of pain and frenzy. For a start, he spent his days deflecting catastrophic events that even in the furthest reaches of their purview would damage only Britain and her allies and yet could each in their own way constitute an Apocalypse. In fact the world ended far more frequently than the fortunate would ever allow themselves to believe, though each time it did was no less damaging for those involved than had an asteroid destroyed the planet's ecosystem. Entire worlds ended in a death of a child, or a lover, or the loss of a business, or the breakdown of a marriage, or a second of distraction behind the wheel. It was only that around these events of such insular magnitude, the rest of human existence continued unscathed and intact, and therefore ignorant. Apocalypse was lightning caught in a bottle: devastating for all within those confines, impossible to imagine for those outside it.

He himself had experienced an apocalypse of this sort three times in his life, and each had been more devastating than the last. The first was when his marriage finally disintegrated. The second was on the cold docks of London as he'd watched Ruth sail into an unknown from which he thought she would never return. And the third was when she had.

Harry's life had ever been a fury of personal tragedy and public stoicism, but this latest Armageddon had nearly finished him for good. He had watched her, quietly, in the months since her return to the Grid, and wondered if she had any idea of what had been going on inside his head since their deliverance from Mani's grip. Probably not – she, after all, had her own Everest of grief to contend with. And why should Ruth think of him at all, apart from as the instrument of her own world ending? _Again_, his conscience whispered to him, in his more desperate moments. _Y__ou ended her world – again. _

And it was true, of course, what that guilty little niggle said. Ruth had evidently been happy in Cyprus – _Cyprus!_ Of all the places he had imagined her to be (and he had spent long, lonely, whisky-filled evenings pondering the question), that little hot and sunny corner of the Med was not one of them. Which of course, was probably the point. If even he, who held the memory of her so deep within his heart, would not think of looking for her there, who else would?

He had looked. He hadn't intended to, had told himself even as he did so that it was actually something else. It had begun about six months after she had disappeared – at first he had tried to throw himself into work, but every where he went in Thames House, he was reminded of her. He'd sit in his office and stare at her desk, remembering how the light from her lamp would illuminate her face in the late hours they somehow always ended up spending there together. It was only when she had been removed from his vision that Harry had truly realised how completely Ruth had filled it. And how impossible it was for him to accept her absence, not then, not ever.

Juliet had granted him some leave. Not in the conventional sense – they were stretched far too thin for that. But it was understood that every now and then, he would not be in on a Friday. On those days, Harry would find himself at Gatwick airport, booking a flight for a long weekend. He'd not arrive there with any particular plan of where to go. Instead, he'd stare up at the departure boards, and decide on the spur of the moment. It was like an act of defiance for the years of control he had exerted over every aspect of his life: Harry Pearce, thrown out on an unknown ocean…

Oh, how he wished _he_ had been.

He did this once a month, every month, until he realised that despite his intentions of whim and freedom, his destinations held a pattern. Rome first, to wander among the piazzas of the Eternal City. Then Florence, and Venice. He stopped one weekend in Athens, another in Geneva, another in Berlin. He ventured as far North as Stockholm, and as far south as Madrid. In Madrid, he sat for hours in the Jardin Botanical, and stared at Goya's visions of personal darkness in the Prado.

And it occurred to him finally, having passed through all these magnificent places, that he had been looking for only one thing. Her face, in a crowd. All else had become a blur. He had walked alone, eaten alone, slept alone. And all the time he had been looking for her.

He'd returned from that trip to Madrid and stopped his quest. He'd known, as soon as he'd acknowledged it, that it was a ridiculous search – even if she had visited those places, the chances of them crossing paths on a foreign street in the three days he spent there were slim enough to be astronomical. And anyway, the Grand Tour had been his dream, not hers. Maybe she was in New York, which she had declared, to his surprise, to be her favourite city. He realised now that he'd protested her choice so immediately, so vehemently, that he hadn't stopped to ask why a Classicist like Ruth would prefer a city in the New World to the old one. He had only meant to tease, enchanted by the fire in her eyes as they'd sat across the table from each other on that one, single, shining night. It had been like watching her when she was in full-flow in the conference room, trying to explain a classical allusion or a complex chain of events – but that night, her enthusiasm was only for him, and unlike in the conference room, he was free to stare at her, to engage with her. The smile that had lit her eyes in that elegant room (and she did, as he had known she would, fit so perfectly into that beautiful setting, like the rare, elegant spirit she was) had been directed at him and only him. And Harry had got carried away in the moment, in the exchange of intimacies so long hoped for but so long denied, and he'd not asked her, "But Ruth, why New York?"

Now, of course, he wished he had done. It was a question that had plagued him ever since – and yet he had never gone there, at least not in search of her. Sometimes he thought about it, about crossing the pond and sitting in Central Park to watch that new world pass by. But what would he be hoping for, even if he did? To spy her feeding the pigeons, as he knew she had on the roof of Thames House? (Despite him ordering her not to, god knew they made a bloody mess. But oh, how he'd loved that she did.)

So he'd given up. Slowly, silently, he'd let her go. Not that he'd stopped dreaming about her – in his subconscious, her face filled his vision every bit as much as it had when she'd been before him in the flesh. But he'd stopped looking, even on the streets of London. He'd stopped checking security reports and flagged passports. He'd just… stopped.

And when she came back, she brought with her a storm that hell itself would have been proud to send forth. Now the face he saw in his dreams was pulled taught by those terrible screams, by her pleading and by her broken-hearted description of him. It made no difference that she'd professed her forgiveness; or rather that she'd told him it wasn't his fault, or even that rationally he _knew_ it wasn't his fault. How was it possible to love so deeply and yet stand by as the object of that love endured such pain? And that self-accusation had tainted the wonder of her return. She was there, once again, her face through the glass of his office window, as he'd so often dreamed of – but unlike his dreams, her return held nothing of him except as the destroyer of what she had so miraculously salvaged from her previous life.

Of course, Harry had not voiced any such thoughts to Ruth. Instead he had withdrawn, happy to accept her gentle reassurances of friendship – a touch on his arm, an offer of a drink – for what they were: it was in her nature to reach out despite her own pain.

His pain, currently, was of the more palpable variety. His head burned with an ache that seemed to reverberate down his spine. Was he lying down? Light approached, from very far away, and with it a growing sense of presence – his presence, somewhere unfamiliar. It receded again, darkness rising up like fog as thought disintegrated, only for the cycle to start again. Noise penetrated the confusion for the first time – a rattle, very far away and getting fainter. A hospital was the logical place for him to be. He could not feel breeze, indicating that he was not outside. There were no sirens.

He was about to sink back into the fog again when something brushed against his hand. Something warm, a faint touch tracing over his knuckles to his fingertips. The light came back and with it came a whisper – his name. His name, and a voice that made his heart swell despite the pain. The touch disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, but he struggled against the dark. He had to find her again. He had to find… He moved his hand, but felt only cool cotton.

"Where… Ruth… Where are you?"

There was a pause, and then the sound of an inhalation, and movement. Her hand grasped his, firmer. The light was interrupted by a shape.

"Here. I'm here, Harry, I'm here."

He tried to open his eyes, needing to see her rather than just feeling her hand in his, but the light was too bright.

"Ssh," she said, "Don't move. Just rest, Harry."

"Why-" he managed, but something like dust caught in throat.

"Ssh," Ruth said, again.

But he had to know. He had to ask, because he had been given two chances to have this woman in his life, and if he was never able to ask her anything personal again, he had to know. He had to know this one thing.

"New York," he said, and felt her go very still. He gave up trying to open his eyes, focussing all his attention on her hand.

"What?" She whispered.

"Why… New York?"

There was a sliver of silence, and then a muted laugh, so quiet and appropriate that he was reassured that this could only be Ruth. Her shadow leaned towards him, and he felt her lips brush his forehead, accompanied by something that felt like rain and so could only be tears.

"Another time."

She pulled away, and he gripped her hand harder. "Don't-"

"I'll stay," she told him, softly. "I'll stay, Harry."

[END]


End file.
